Breaking the chains, winning the games, and saving Western Civilization.

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Savaged by statistical sheep

Well, that certainly didn't take long. After successfully detaching herself from the androsphere, Susan Walsh appears to have been unfortunately and unduly influenced by her lack of contact with the rigors of male criticism. She attempts to attack what she describes as "male wishful thinking" with a combination of conventional female shaming, ad hominem, illogic, and an appeal to authority.

Now let's look at the flaws in her critique, which she titles "The Myth of Plummeting Female Sexual Market Value". Susan begins right away by begging the question and demonstrating her own personal bias with regards to the matter.

A. "A reader shared this bit of male wishful thinking about female sexual
market value. It was apparently cooked up by a typically disgruntled and
sexually frustrated older male licking his mating wounds."

In addition to begging the question, Susan commits failure of logic known as "the genetic fallacy". Her problem is that "The Godfather" is a great movie regardless of whether Al Pacino says it is or not. In like manner, women observably decline in sexual value regardless of whether it is "a frustrated older male licking his mating wounds" or "a hot young man who turns up his nose at overweight matrons due to his preference for 18 year-old swimsuit models" who mentions the fact.

1. "Since, male attraction cues are directly tied to female fertility and
define female beauty, a female’s sexual value should not decline at all
before her fertility does."

Provably false assumption. If this were true, the average age of a Playboy Playmate would not be 22, it would be the mid-point of menarche (12) and menopause (51), or 31.5. Even if we assume that male attraction cues are tied to female fertility, it should not need to be pointed out that a woman who can have many children will be valued considerably more for her fertility than the woman who can only have one. As a Wharton MBA, Susan should not be unfamiliar with the concept of time value, as the time value of money is deemed the central concept in finance theory.

2. "Fertility declines very gradually between the ages of 27 and 35."

Irrelevant. See above. It is readily apparent that Susan has made the mistake of assuming the correlative connection between fertility and male attraction is a causal one.

3. "Notice how the male sexual value begins its precipitous drop at around
36, after declining gradually for five years. Not much difference."

Irrelevant. A decline in male sexual value cannot possibly make the decline in female sexual value a myth.

I will address why Kelly's mathematical objections are similarly irrelevant in a future post, but in summary, simply citing MATH isn't going to cut it here. The decline of women's sexual value is no myth; it is, to the contrary, absolutely undeniable. Even an unattractive 22 year-old woman has more sexual value than every single 88 year-old woman on the planet.

Rollo himself notes: "[L]ets put it this way, the cosmetics, fashion and plastic surgery
industries didn’t become the multi-trillion dollar corporate juggernauts
they are today as the result of an overwhelming demand to make women
appear older."

Given that, the question that obviously follows is if men and women possess equivalent sexual value at all ages or not. Unless Susan wants to stand on the extremely shaky ground of asserting that the sexual value of men and women ascend and decline in unison, all she is actually quibbling about is where the curves happen to be drawn in what appears to be little more than an attempt to engage in a feeble ad hominem attack.

And why would any man wish for declining female sexual value anyhow? Has Susan really forgotten that men are the individuals who will be expected to have sex with those aging women? And who could possibly be more aware of that declining value than a older male who has witnessed his female age peers decline from their physical peaks?

47 comments:

My experience has been women's value starts to decline at 27. I'm seen more than one very popular woman hit age 27. then all of a sudden they're not so popular anymore. Many of the cannot handle it, get hostile about men, blame all their problems on them, then decline into spinsterdom with a cat or two and psychiatric medication to control their depression and anxiety.

I'm confused. Isn't Susan Walsh a woman whom many manosphere bloggers used to quote because she was doing good work? Am I getting her confused with someone else? This tripe doesn't even rise to feministing levels. Her point #3 doesn't even make sense: how does men's value dropping after 36 prove that women's doesn't drop earlier, or invalidate the gap between the two? That's not even math; it's just eyesight.

Bob, I know what you mean. I've met women who were still pretty hot in their 30s, but had I met them younger, I'm sure they would have been even hotter. I've also seen more than one woman take a serious nosedive in a matter of a couple years. When the wall hits, sometimes it hits hard.

I knew one woman in particular, and she just cleaned up, because she would flirt with any guy she liked, and was asked out all the time. In some ways she was just astonishing. Talk about Girl Game! She was a natural. Then at 27 it was basically, bam, it was over. She was rarely being asked out. Then she ended up in her 40s, no husband, no home, no children, meds for anxiety and depression - and a cat. And she's not the only one I've seen take that nosedive. And I've found they were almost always extroverts, who think most of what's good in life comes from other people,

This has got to be wishful-thinking/rationalization on her part. The "it's not impossible!" trope is popular -- I've used it myself -- but she doesn't actually refute much of anything. The Wall is out there, and while it might not be precisely at 30, for some women, it looms for them all. And yeah, a 74 year-old guy can get a 55 year old woman. A 74 year old woman can get cats.

A woman's optimum beauty ranges from the ages of 16 to 38, with each year up to 27 being 10 and slowly declining thereafter by 0.5 finishing at a floor of let's say 5.

A 35 year old effectively offers 8% of her window of beauty.

The analogy with sports players is very apt, no one is paying top price for players over 30, Samuel Eto'o cost US$29 million at 27 and now at 32 despite still being a top class player he virtually cost zero. Simply put, his future value is declining.

The analogy with sports players is very apt, no one is paying top price for players over 30, Samuel Eto'o cost US$29 million at 27 and now at 32 despite still being a top class player he virtually cost zero. Simply put, his future value is declining.

Bingo. It's even built into games like Top Eleven. A five-star striker at 32 costs less than a three-star striker at 19.

While I can't find why exactly Susan Walsh is now persona nongrata in the Manosphere, I can't say I am all that surprised.

Her posts were hardly lining up with anything else in the blog roll. All she really did was not tell women the same old platitudes. She still had the whole female primacy thing going. Her posts just never directly blamed men for everything.

Assuming the people involved take care of themselves. My 10-year high school reunion was quite eye-opening in this regard. Carbohydrates and laziness have absolutely nuked way too many women who ought to still be quite attractive in principle.

The title of her blog is "Hooking up smart" which for woman is like saying "Smoking Meth smart". It is a contradiction. I remember the purge of anyone on her blog that would dare challenge the notion that riding the carousel was deleterious to a woman. You could discuss it... sort of... but you better not make the matron of the site uneasy about her own impressive N number or else she would pounce on your post and that's that. The rest of the wisdom found there dried up pretty quick after that. Now it's mostly manginas and female circle jerking telling the little princesses that every girl is beautiful even if they are former crack addled prostitutes nearing age 50.

Susan doesn't like the concept of the wall so she tries, feebly, to argue against it just as she tried, stupidly, to argue that N count really doesn't matter that much. In other words she is older with a high N and her tender widdle feelings are hurt so anyone pointing out reality is a meany poo. Her site is now about as truthful and relevant as Huffpo now.

Vox: "I will address why Kelly's mathematical objections are similarly irrelevant in a future post, but in summary, simply citing MATH isn't going to cut it here. The decline of women's sexual value is no myth; it is, to the contrary, absolutely undeniable."

I'm looking forward to your analysis on this one, Vox. In my experience as a physicist, many mathematicians get caught up in the mathematics and don't break out to view if reality matches with the elegant formulas (though physicists often get caught in this trap as well.)

Rollo's graph is not a purely theoretical construct, but an expression of an empirical data set he and others have collected in the "physical reality" of Relationship Space. Just as mathematics roughly describes reality if we can find the correct set of formulas, so does Rollo's graph generally describe behavior data points he has collected within Relationship Space. The mathematician (Kelly) was caught up in dissecting the math when she should have focused on the empirical data from the "physics".

This is so fundamental that it seems hardly worth arguing over, but people will find the silliest notions to argue over--and what is the point, really? Arguing, even with the use of numbers, won't change reality for anybody. It makes sense biologically that female sexual value will decline as she ages because she's the one who does the work in bearing offspring. Her body takes the hit. Also, there's a little something I like to call phases of life. Why would a woman want to retain a high sexual value after the age of 38? Why would she want to after the age of 30? There is more to life than being a hot young thing, ripe for pregnancy. Why would women expect to be Eve after they've already been Helen? Ridiculous nonsense. Why does a man retain his sexual value longer? Oh, let's see: he's more or less fertile from puberty until death; he doesn't have to bear the offspring; therefore, his value is based on different factors. This is not rocket science. Math is not required. Marry young; have children young. Enjoy it. Then enjoy what comes after. People are weird.

These sorts of graphs reflect aging male fantasy – a sort of 50 Shades of Bray. Enter Kelly, a PhD statistician who takes the top chart apart with math:

Because, you know, math n stuff. The over the top send up of this comment is really comical not just because this isn't a (purely) statistical problem, but this was an anonymous comment left on my blog by a woman whose credentials none of us can verify. She is just "Kelly". "Kelly" has no more intrinsic gravitas by posting a comment on my blog than she would if she called into talk radio and said the same thing.

Unless Susan wants to stand on the extremely shaky ground of asserting that the sexual value of men and women ascend and decline in unison, all she is actually quibbling about is where the curves happen to be drawn in what appears to be little more than an attempt to engage in a feeble ad hominem attack.

This is it in an nutshell. I featured Rollo's chart in a post a month prior to Tracy The Statistician's comment on it, and in that post I made a similar point:

As with anything like this, individuals are likely to disagree slightly over the fine tuning of the curves. However, even if you don’t agree on the exact details I think most in this sphere will agree that Rollo has captured the essence of men and women’s changing SMV with age.

I went even further, arguing that you have to include the female desire for male status for men to compare with women's raw sexual attraction:

Young women are the rockstars of the dating world. In one sense Rollo’s chart understates the scale of young women’s SMV power, because very few 38 year old men (the male peak in the graphic) will experience the kind of raw attraction power that the average 23 year old woman experiences. It is only when you include the female desire for male investment that the relative heights of the two curves come into balance.

I originally assumed that Tracy The Statistician was responding to this post, but it turns out she was responding to a post from two and a half years ago titled Advice to a woman in her 30s looking to marry. It turns out that TFH upthread had linked to the same chart by Rollo.

Another take. Imagine a hot commodity athlete with women chasing him. He passed up several lucrative contracts and spent his 20s getting drunk and laid, racking up debt he "knew" his future options would handle. Then, nearing 30, he decided it was time to settle down with a contract. Is there a woman alive who wouldn't understand or think it was unfair that no one would give him what they offered him on the uphill side of his prime?

I'm looking forward to your analysis on this one, Vox. In my experience as a physicist, many mathematicians get caught up in the mathematics and don't break out to view if reality matches with the elegant formulas (though physicists often get caught in this trap as well.)

The thing is Kelly's "mathematical argument" was sheer nonsense which is what made it so hilarious that Susan latched on to it and then repeatedly pounded the table on what an awesome takedown it is.

One of Kelly's main points was that the areas under the curves MUST be equal similar to something like Kirchoff's current law at the node of a circuit. The idea that male and female total cumulative SMVs must equal as some sort of identity is ludicrous. It's just made up pseudomath.

The other nonsensical point was adjusting SMVs for "market conditions". This is ludicrous as well. If you put 100 Playboy Playmates and Penthouse Pets in isolation with five super short loser dork omegas you are not going to adjust down those female 8-10s down to 5s simply because they are in "oversupply" relative to a "shortage" of men that is entirely made up of 2s.

"Kelly" is most likely a fraud as far as really being a PhD, and Susan grabbing her argument and pounding it like Kruschev with his shoe shows both her desperation in trying to refute Red Pill concepts, and the fact that her mental faculties are most certainly diminishing. As a side point, I'd note anecdotally that I've experienced a few post menopausal women including my own mother and their mental abilities go down significantly.

"Assuming the people involved take care of themselves. My 10-year high school reunion was quite eye-opening in this regard."

OMG. One of my friends told me many of the cute girls in high school looked like grandmothers at 35. And I've met ones that looked so different I did not know who they were until I was informed. More than once I blurted, "What happened to her?"

Mike C said..."The thing is Kelly's "mathematical argument" was sheer nonsense which is what made it so hilarious that Susan latched on to it and then repeatedly pounded the table on what an awesome takedown it is."

I guess I was being obtuse. You express the idea I was gunning for better than I do: Kelly was playing at math games when she should have addressed the real-world data. The mathematical analysis was nonsense, as it was all a regurgitation of theory that didn't apply at all to Rollo's data. To take it as proof for anything shows a lack of understanding of both the mathematical blather (that it *is* blather) and the real-world data. This is a critical area where Susan failed.

Stats, schmatz. I don't care what the "truth", for anybody else, is. I don't care what the average anyguy or anygal does. All I know is that I wouldn't bother with a woman younger than 25 or older than 33, at least a 15 year difference, no matter how pretty or potentially viable she might be. Not even, at this point, for a little 'leg'. I would rather die toothless and without sex than marry a woman even close to my age. Further, if I could get off my ass, it wouldn't be a problem. Yum! I have turned down more such women in the last few years than a lot of guys even get the chance at.

Besides, I think I told you she was just a single corner turn away from going all mad cow on you. Saw that coming when I noticed she could, at least in theory (haven't seen a picture of her), get away with publicly wearing a skirt. It's in their genetics. Without a man to steer, they go all stupid in a hurry, regarding men, women, romance, love, and their body. Mad cow indeed.

The "Flowers for Algernon" sort of circle at HUS is breathtaking. In the beginning it was very plainly blue-pill and mainstream - typical frustrations of a Kay Hymowitz type wringing her hands at why these awful men aren't treating their poor little dears. Absolutely no understanding of the male experience, the apex fallacy, dualistic mating strategies or girl game.

In the middle, red-piller Manospherians flooded in thanks largely to linkage from Ferdinand/In Mala Fide after SW posted about Mystery (Susan credited Obsidian with encouraging her to read Neil Strauss' book). Much mirth was had dissecting relationships and sexual mind games in a mixed environs with few holds barred.

In the latter phase, all of the learning and messaging that was based in a real understanding of gender dynamics was undone in the name of not making the target audience feel bad, a classic error of confusing positive feeling with positive benefit (in the same sense that working out is not comfortable but benefits its practitioner). Men of contrary nature, including those who had been strongly loyal to the HUS clan through some high-voltage times and provided strong value to the brand via intelligent and friendly commentary, were aggressively and pyrotechnically driven out. It became a warren, a house of self-congratulation. All of us were retroactively branded a la "we have always been at war with Eastasia."

I myself bowed out in early 2012 after SW deliberately misstated quotations of me to claim that I had insulted the female readers and that I believed "all women are sluts." And you know something? I went on a game tear after that, breaking a dry spell and having my pick of a nice pool of gals which led to a LTR. I never did as well with women as when I stopped caring what SW thought of my game. I have to admit that for me and a number of other men who hung out there, there was a certain validation we habituated into in having a sort of mother-surrogate to chat about our dating life with and to tell us that wanting sex and a relationship wasn't a bad thing, that she wanted us to have that too. (It's a saddening part of the game journey for many men to learn that they have to let go of a desire for that validation, not only when it comes from a woman you're pursuing but also from a platonic acquaintance. I guess Freud and Oedipus were right.)

Anyway, I checked in there about a week ago and there were 100 comments literally between the same five people, with liberal references to J4G and other male writers. So Susan pats herself on the back for purging the place of bad male feelings, but can't stop bloviating and and rehashing and spreading discontented invective about how bad we all were. Susan, a middle-aged woman, also wonders aloud what middle-aged men are doing commenting on a blog about 20something sex lives. Teh s0lips1sm lives.

In the end, I think we learned two things:-The kind of women interested in reading a dating blog find the male style of frank, direct communication (and in fact the reality itself of the male locker room) to be deeply unsettling.-Women aren't going to change what they like in a man. There were so many stories of the same script that I lost count: "I took your advice and met this really great beta guy but he's like, you know, he's just beta..." with a curdled lip of disattraction.

Women have tried shaming alpha men into being more relationship-friendly - all that did was make beta guys more beta, alpha men don't listen to that stuff or they co-opt it a la Hugh Schwyzer. They have tried to hint and cajole the beta men into being more manly, but that confused the beta men even more, disequipped as they are to deal with the indirect and pluralistic female communication style (e.g. shit tests and "just get it"). They've tried telling themselves to adjust what they value and find attractive in men, but that has predictably failed. Susan has tried all of them, and her even still flip-flopping stances suggests none of them have stuck with her core audience.

I think Susan was/is ultimately perplexed and frustrated about why her seemingly "it just happened" life path - go to college, sleep around in your 20's, build you career, meet the right guy along the way and decide to make a family with him - wasn't happening for her daughter's cohort of friends. That's probably the path of lots of her age cohort as well, and boomer anxiety over their children's mating options is no doubt driving the editorial decisions behind the flurry of "end of men" articles. We here know the reasons why - incentives have changed that drive middle-class men out of the market, and among the educated white-collar set feminized upbringings have made even more of the "eligible" men sexually unattractive and unable to capitalize on their structural advantages.

"In the latter phase, all of the learning and messaging that was based in a real understanding of gender dynamics was undone in the name of not making the target audience feel bad, a classic error of confusing positive feeling with positive benefit (in the same sense that working out is not comfortable but benefits its practitioner)....All of us were retroactively branded a la "we have always been at war with Eastasia."

I visited her site a few times early after the link from here, but had the feeling that NAWALT was in full effect there and only likely to get stronger. I guess she figured she reached her quota of reality and it was time to close that branch down again. I can see why not long ago she started being referred to as "Aunt Giggles" in any manosphere references.

A recent survey found that women dramatically underestimate how much fertility declines with age. They estimated that a 30 year-old had an 80% chance of getting pregnant in one try. The real likelihood is 30%. They also thought a 40 year-old woman would have a 40% success rate, while those odds are less than 10%.

[...]

So why aren’t women getting the message? How can women with master’s degrees have such a poor understanding of their own bodies? Three guesses, the first two don’t count.

“A decade ago, a campaign by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine sparked a vicious backlash. Ads on public buses in several big cities featured a baby bottle shaped like an hourglass, to warn women their time was running out. But women’s rights groups called it a scare tactic that left women feeling pressured and guilty.”

So now they’re feeling barren and depressed instead.

The prognosis for marriage is grim. We need to take our heads out of the sand and speak the truth about this issue. It’s too late for the generation of women in their 30s and 40s today. Those of you in your 20s can have marriage and a family if you want it, but you can’t have it all. My generation of feminists lied to you about that.

“For any given woman, RV is age-dependent. It increases throughout childhood as she successfully passes through a period during which death but not reproduction is possible, reaches a maximum at the beginning of the reproductive period [typically the late teens], and steadily declines thereafter, reaching zero at the onset of menopause. [...]

A number of authors have argued that men are attracted to features associated with RV…. In particular, some authors have argued that men are attracted to features associated with women’s age of maximum RV, late adolescence… And indeed, many studies show that sexually attracted features are maximally developed in women at these ages. Women’s breasts, for instance, develop at puberty, reaching adult size by late adolescence. Men are particularly attracted to breasts that are firm, upright, and characterized by relatively reduced nipple pigmentation. These features peak during adolescence and in young, nulliparous women… Women’s waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) is a phenotypic indicator of the ratio of gynoid fat distributed throughout the hips and buttocks to android fat around the abdomen. In many modern and traditional populations, men find women’s bodies with relatively low WHRs (around .7)… particularly attractive. WHRs reach minimum values during adolescence and, on average, rise as a function of women’s age and parity…”"

I think another important lesson learned was just how quickly a lot of women can make a complete 180 and become vindictive toward those who were previously loyal and supportive. Obviously, NAWALT, but certainly enough for it to be a cautionary tale.

I think another important lesson learned was just how quickly a lot of women can make a complete 180 and become vindictive toward those who were previously loyal and supportive. Obviously, NAWALT, but certainly enough for it to be a cautionary tale.

This!!!!!!!!!!!!

All men would do well to fully understand that because that applies to marriage as well. If you get divorced, you'll see a woman you never believed exist. Obviously, in the case of Internet "drama" the ramifications and consequences are trivial...who gives a flying f*ck if some random woman thinks you are a "good guy" anymore. However, when a marriage break ups you have financial assets to divide, child custody and visitation.

I don't know there is any sure fire way to protect against this except not get married and that is probably too extreme, but it means you need to screen carefully. Personally, I would screen out any woman as a marriage candidate who has shown any sign in her life of vindictiveness, wanting to get back, excessively argumentative. That is a woman that could make your life hell if she pulls a 180 on you.